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In a nutshell, Yomiuri beat Kia 9-4. It was a decent game until the 7th, when Yomiuri put seven runs on the board. Yakyu Baka has a write-up of the game, so I’ll limit my comments to a few observations. And here they are

This game failed to sell out Nagasaki’s rather small stadium. I wonder why they played in Nagasaki rather than the beautiful new stadium in Hiroshima?

The game felt like a spring training game spiked with a competitiveness, but the Giants did play all their starters. Last year, Seibu gave their foreign players the series off and let a number of their ni-gun kids play.

Kia’s starter, Yang Hyeon-Jong, was pretty good. He seemed to work mostly off of his breaking pitches, but seemed to have a respectable fastball, which I think he could have used more. In any event, I hope to see more.

Taishi Ohta pinch-hit at the end of the game, but looked completely fooled by You Dong-Hoon, who was otherwise hittable.

Next year, the organizers are looking at bringing back the four-team format, and hosting the series in Taiwan. Good idea, in my opinion. I don’t think continuing to centralize this on Japan is in the best interest of Asian baseball.

I almost included Huber in my list of 2010 NPB acquisition targets, but left him out because I thought he might get another MLB look somewhere. He’s a pretty typical 4A guy at this point: successful in 3A, frequently on 40-man rosters and occasionally on 25-man rosters. But the Twins already have a pretty good first baseman named Justin, so playing at the next level was going to take an injury or a move to another organization.